The first of three Democrats facing expulsion votes in the Tennessee House of Representatives Thursday, April 6, was voted to be expelled by his colleagues on Thursday afternoon, amid hundreds of loud boos and chants from protestors in the state capitol in Nashville.

The debate before the vote to expel state Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville lasted many hours as each of the three representatives faced or will face separate hearings on Thursday. Representatives from each side of the aisle spoke passionately, shouted, yelled, and expressed emotion about the historic move to remove the members.

Resolutions to expel the members were introduced Monday after the lawmakers led protesters with a bullhorn in chants calling for gun control measures while on the House floor following the deadly Covenant School shooting in Nashville the week prior.

The move is exceedingly rare in Tennessee–with only two other members expelled from the chamber since the Civil War. Those votes, however, were largely bipartisan in stark contrast to Thursday’s vote. The vote was 72 to 25, with 66 needed to expel. Two Republicans were absent from the vote. All Democrats voted against Jones’s expulsion.

Jones, in his closing remarks, urged his colleagues to vote against his expulsion by telling them “the world is watching.”

“When I walked up to this well on last Thursday, I was thinking about the thousands of students who were outside demanding that we do something. In fact, many of their signs said ‘do something,’” Jones said in his closing plea. “That was their only ask of us is to respond to their grief, to respond to a traumatized community. But in response to that, the first action of this body is to expel members for calling for common sense gun legislation.”

Jones went on to claim his Republican colleagues were committing an “assault on democracy” and that today will “be a dark day for Tennessee because it will signal to the nation that there is no democracy in Tennessee.”

The House is currently taking up a resolution to expel state Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville and will then take up a resolution to expel state Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis later this evening.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information is available.